


from what i’ve tasted of desire

by kattyshack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (of shakespearean proportions), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Apologies, Canon Compliant, F/M, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 23:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11565819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack
Summary: When Jon returns to Winterfell before the war, he and Sansa make amends and confessions in light of the Dragon Queen’s deception.(title from “fire and ice,” by robert frost)





	from what i’ve tasted of desire

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: mentions of jon/daenerys, far more in passing than anything explicit (i.e., decidedly -not- a love triangle because i don’t play like that). on that note, this is not a daenerys-friendly fic, nor does it put on any such airs; if a villainous daenerys isn’t your cup of tea, this fic probably won’t be, either. proceed at your own risk

When the truth comes, all of a sudden Jon feels as though he’s done everything wrong.

He had returned to Winterfell with Daenerys’ armies at his back, but there is no victory in his homecoming—only shame and dread that, for once, has little to do with the oncoming war. Hardly a fortnight ago, Daenerys had told him of the raven she’d received: The Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell had taken Lord Petyr Baelish to husband.

Since his resurrection, Jon had never felt so empty. The words rang hollow in his mind and left an ache in his chest. He had told Baelish never to touch Sansa, he’d threatened the man within an inch of his worthless life, and now… Now, Sansa was his, and all to ensure the Starks’ claim upon the Vale. Time and again, Sansa had told Jon that he needed to familiarize himself with this Southern game of politics as she had, but he had been too preoccupied to do so.

_Father couldn’t protect me and neither can you. Stop trying._

He hadn’t stopped. He never would. But he had failed, anyway.

Had he known the truth of the matter, Jon never would have succumbed to the desperation that threatened to tear him apart from the inside out. But in his ignorance, he’d abandoned his honor for some semblance of comfort that, in the end, left him feeling all the emptier, and he arrives home with guilt churning within him like a winter storm.

“Lord Baelish is dead,” Sansa tells him when he asks after the man’s whereabouts. A crease forms between her brows as she studies his face. “I sent you a raven after his execution. Who told you otherwise?”

The guilt churns fresh, and rises like bile in Jon’s throat.

“I’ve seen it, and Howland Reed has attested to it,” Bran tells him when they hold a small council later that same evening. “You are the legitimate son of Rhaegar Targaryen and our aunt, Lyanna Stark. Should a Targaryen take the Iron Throne, it is rightfully yours.”

Jon feels as though he’s going to be sick.

* * *

It is the middle of the night before he’s alone with her.

When the moon is high and bright, Ghost howls somewhere in the wolfswood and there is a soft knock upon his chamber door. Jon knows it’s her, can feel it in his bones, and almost trips over himself in his haste to open the door that separates them. There are a thousand words that he could say, but when he locks eyes with her, he finds that a thousand is far too many and not nearly enough at all.

So he steps wordlessly aside for Sansa to enter. The scrape of the lock makes the silent stone walls shudder.

They sit on the bed, perched on the edge as though one or the other might flee, or—perhaps worse—fall into the chasm that has opened at their feet. Jon was halfway down before he realized he was there at all, but now his shame sets his skin aflame and he doesn’t _deserve_ for her to follow.

She does not know what he’s done, so she takes his hand and rubs soothing circles with her fingertips so that Jon’s skin might forever be marked with her prints. The firelight flickers in her hair and shadows shift upon her skin; she looks like the sun rising in the dawn. The tightness in his chest whenever he looks at her should have abated upon Bran’s news. He should feel free and whole and alive, ready to love her so that everyone might see, but he’d done everything wrong and she deserves _more_ than that.

Sansa looks at him, a question in her eyes, and Jon wants more than anything to answer it with a truth that doesn’t break his heart.

“What now?” she asks, voice hushed and hoarse as though she’s been crying. But her eyes are dry and her skin is only flushed from the warmth the fire provides.

“Sansa, I…” It hurts to speak, hurts to look at her, so he looks at their joined hands instead. He wonders if she’ll let him touch her once he tells her the truth of it. All he’s wanted for so long is the freedom to touch her, for her to want him the way that he does her; he’s wanted this guilt over loving her to dissipate in favor of what love _should_ be. And he’s wanted—gods, how he’s wanted to show her what that means.

_We need to trust each other._

He cannot hide this from her. Even if she leaves him afterwards, he cannot bear to placate her with falsehoods. How could he treat her so? After all she’s been through, after all she’s endured, he will not be just another man who tells her what she wants to hear so it might meet his own ends. He will tell her the truth, and he will beg her to stay in spite of it.

And so he tells her of the raven Daenerys claimed to have received, informing her of Sansa’s marriage to Petyr Baelish in a formal alliance with the Vale. There are no tears shed between them, but there is a thickness in Jon’s throat and Sansa’s fingers shake in his. When he tells her that he’d lain with Daenerys afterwards—not because he’d wanted to, but because she was _there_ —Sansa stiffens, almost imperceptibly, but he holds fast to her hand and finally, finally looks upon her once more.

Her eyes are bright and he is desperate to make her understand. He pulls her close and buries his face in the crook of her neck, and her body yields beneath his attentions. Because he can now, can’t he? She is not his sister, and he can touch her if she lets him.

“Sansa, please.” His voice cracks, and her fingers dip into his hair. His arms move to hold her to him, so that she might feel the mad beating of his heart and know that it’s all for her. “If I had known, if I had even _thought_ —I thought I’d lost you, I never thought I could have you at all. And still, I—fuck, Sansa,” he swears, furious with himself. “When I was with her, I thought of you. Only of you.”

Her body trembles, her voice hitches but softens when she says, “You have to apologize to her.”

“No,” Jon all but growls. His lips drag on her skin, and he presses them more firmly against her neck so that she trembles again. “I won’t apologize for loving you. Not anymore. And certainly not after she lied to keep you from me. The only woman whose forgiveness I’ll beg is yours. That night…”

He swallows thickly and tries to shake the memory of what his pain had cost. He keeps kissing her; if she doesn’t stop him, he doesn’t think that he ever will. “I dishonored you. I betrayed you. Can you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” He feels the curve of Sansa’s lips against his forehead. The knot in his chest loosens in the wake of her smile, in the pardon she’s offered that he doesn’t deserve. “You weren’t mine, Jon.”

He lifts his head to catch her gaze. The firelight dances in her over-bright eyes, but her smile is true and he will do anything to make sure that it’s never anything but. With the war against the White Walkers looming ever nearer, he knows he will have to leave her again for a time; but here and now he vows that no matter how long he’s away, he will never, ever hurt her again.

Jon traces the apples of her cheeks, and as the fire cracks in the grate, he tells her another truth:

“I was always yours.”

And when his mouth takes hers—finally, at last, and with nothing to stop them now—she is his as well. 

* * *

“You lied to me.”

Jon hovers just inside the door, unwilling to step farther beyond the threshold towards her. He had spent the better part of the week avoiding her—an easy enough feat in a castle as vast as Winterfell—but his temper could not be truly sated until he confronted her. He tries to bank his rage, but it simmers just below the surface of his composure, and he wonders if this is what it means to have Targaryen blood in his veins.

Daenerys doesn’t bother feigning ignorance. She merely shrugs, her eyes on the fire and her lips against the rim of a goblet. “Marriage, execution… What’s the difference, really?”

He doesn’t trust himself to speak to that, but it’s not the only thing he’s come to discuss.

“Our bannermen no longer trust me as they did. Your name is a threat to the North,” Jon informs her. _Your name. Not mine. Never mine._ “I’m to wed Sansa to solidify an alliance, and to make sure my family keeps hold of Winterfell, as is their right.”

“Your family?” Daenerys echoes. She spares him a disinterested glance. “What about ours?”

There is not a beat of hesitation before Jon says, “The Starks are the only family I’ll know.”

It’s as she’d suspected, precisely why she’d lied to him about Sansa’s marriage in the first place. Still she must ask, if only to taunt him: “You would cast me aside for her?”

“Yes,” he answers before she can so much as finish the question.

The faintest of smirks crosses her mouth. “Did I mean so little to you?”

He does not answer, and that is answer enough.

She had known, of course, that he hadn’t wanted her. She had known that behind his closed eyes—screwed shut so tightly that they might never open—he had seen another. Even if he hadn’t lost himself and murmured _Sansa Sansa Sansa_ like a prayer, she would have known that it was his Northern queen he wanted.

It had been of no consequence to her. She hadn’t wanted him, either, only what she might be able to gain from him.

“I needed you loyal to me,” Daenerys says, as though that explains it, as though it is justification.

There is a tic in Jon’s jaw when he bites out, “And that was the best way to ensure that I’d bend the knee, was it?”

“Why not?” She thinks of Drogo, Jorah, Daario, Tyrion… She had not lain with them all, but even the barest flicker of hope had been enough for them. “It’s worked before.”

“Not this time.”

“Clearly,” Daenerys agrees. “But it was worth a try. My birthright was at risk. I couldn’t have you distracted by your infatuation with your sister—or cousin, as it happens. Who’s to say you wouldn’t have betrayed me for her? I thought perhaps I could make you love me instead, and then I needn’t worry. No matter now.”

She finishes her wine and sets the stained cup aside, then folds her hands primly in her lap as she regards him again. “I should like an audience with your lady.”

“No.”

“Why not?” she asks again, this time with a wry grin as she looks upon him. “Is she afraid of me?”

Jon very nearly laughs. “You’re in the North now, Daenerys. This is Stark country. What makes you think she has anything to fear from you here?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” he says again, willing to play her games so long as she loses. “No, Daenerys, she’s not afraid of you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t stand in your way.”

 _I’ll protect you. I promise._ Sansa had told him, more often than she’d told him anything else, that he couldn’t. But like hell will he stop trying.

Daenerys’ eyes are cold and flat as they appraise him. The air is fraught with a war neither of them had anticipated, but all the same seems inevitable now; perhaps it had always seemed that way.

“So this is how it is to be, nephew?”

He only nods—once, and with a ringing finality—and leaves her.

* * *

Despite the necessity for a war council, Jon continues to refuse permission for Daenerys to sit privately with his wife. Sansa had been a bit impatient with him as a result, but still he would not relent.

“Don’t you trust me?” she wants to know. They lay together in their marriage bed, where they have shared the nights since they exchanged vows beneath the heart tree, where Jon swears that he will return once the war is done.

“You know I do.” He presses a kiss to her temple, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as he does so. “But I don’t trust her. Not anymore.”

Sansa opens her mouth to protest further, but Jon silences her with a kiss to her lips this time. She tastes sweet, she always does, and he could drown in her if he wanted; indeed, he spends his nights doing so, and his mornings, too. An almost indignant breath escapes her, but he tastes her grin when she kisses him back and it is enough.

Neither of them are smiling later, as they sit side-by-side in a council meeting with Daenerys and her advisors. Jon’s hold on his temper is tenuous, but Sansa’s hand on his knee manages to lessen the tension in his shoulders. Arya and Bran are present but, for the moment, silent as they measure this new enemy in their home.

“In exchange for my armies, I expect the North to bend the knee,” Daenerys says, and will not hear a word against this stipulation. “As we agreed.”

“ _Take_ the Iron Throne, I don’t want it,” Jon insists for the umpteenth time. This argument has been broached so many times before and yet they never seem to move past it. “We have more pressing worries.”

“I came to the Seven Kingdoms to rule,” Daenerys reminds him, as though the White Walkers aren’t marching ever closer, “but your claim is stronger than mine. Who’s to say the people would accept me, unless the King in the North abdicates his own seat to support mine in the South?”

“Since when do you care whether you’re accepted or not? You’ll take what you want, won’t you?” Jon’s disdain is obvious when he drones, “With fire and blood.”

“And I will, should it come to that. Is that what you want, Jon? For me to take what I want, as our family has done for centuries?” Her eyes flick to Sansa, who bristles in self-defense, and her meaning is plain when she adds, “I can’t guarantee survivors.”

Something flashes in Jon’s eyes, but his voice is cold and measured, a king’s demand: _“Are you threatening my wife?”_

Sansa’s hand tightens on his knee and Daenerys says nothing.

There is a loud _thunk!_ as Arya buries her dagger—one of many weapons she keeps on her person—into the table in front of Daenerys. The younger woman’s gaze does not falter, not even beneath this pretender queen’s withering stare.

“Lucky for you, guest right still means something to the Starks, _my lady_.” Arya’s voice is a drawl around the title, her refusal to address Daenerys as _Your Grace_ evident and dripping with mockery. “But threaten my sister again, and when this is over I’ll hunt you down in your Southern castle and kill you there.”

She leaves no room for anyone to doubt her words, and no one would dare. The sisters share a look that says more than either of them would say aloud, Bran merely nods, and Jon’s hand smooths over his wife’s skirt to comfort them both.

The opposing parties do not reach any agreement today.

* * *

In the end, there is no Iron Throne to sit upon, and no one left who would take it regardless. Instead, Jon returns to Winterfell: to his kingdom, his queen, his home, his family. Bran and Arya still call him brother, and there is some hope in that. They are not happy, not yet, but at last he can see more than safety on their horizon.

He had fought, and now all that’s left is what he’d been fighting for in the first place.

When he comes home, Sansa—his lady, his love, his life—leaps into his arms, and all of a sudden Jon feels as though he’s done everything right.


End file.
